If you read my last blog post and, like I do, love long theater performances during which ”nothing happens, twice” (Vivian Mercier about Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (best play ever)), then you’ll probably enjoy my story about the two waiting robots 🙂

Artificial Intelligence or AI: Everyone talks about it, nobody really knows how to do it, everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, so everyone claims they are doing it (check out Dan Ariely for the original).

In this post I try to describe development in AI in context of its past and current hype cycles along with the actual AI capacity.

AI, which is a subfield of computer science that deals with the simulation of intelligent behaviours in machines, has its origins in the 1950’s. In 1956, John McCarthy organized the Dartmouth conference, inviting leading researchers to discuss ideas around intelligent machines. The term ”Artificial Intelligence” was coined during that conference. What then followed, was a time during which fundamental breakthroughs were expected in AI, and therefore a lot of research funding was invested, and accordingly a lot of AI research was conducted. The excitement around AI lasted until around 1974 when the levels of expectations on AI, and actual achievements did not match – and a phase of disillusionment followed. This phase between 1974-1982 is known as the AI winter. Research funding was withdrawn and accordingly research in AI decreased substantially.

From 1983 until today, AI is experiencing a revival (first gradually and since 2011 rapidly). This revival is mainly due to the advancement in machine learning methods applied to areas such as image analysis and natural language processing. This advancement can be attributed to today’s fast computers on which huge neural networks can process huge data sets. This technology trigger lead to a renewed enthusiasm around AI, similar to the one in the 1950’s. The advancements of AI research have mainly been demonstrated in games where machines beat humans (e.g. Chess, Go), natural language processing, self-driving cars, and medical diagnosis (i.e. medical data analysis).

Now let’s look at hype cycles. The Gartner hype cycle illustrates how technology hypes are triggered by technological advancement, leading to a peak of inflated expectations which is followed by a drop into a trough of disillusionment. After this follows a slope of enlightenment and eventually a plateau of productivity where expectations adapt to the reality of the technological capacity.

Gartner hype cycle

If I sketch AI’s historical and current development I need two Gartner hype cycles. AI’s first hype was between 1956 and 1974 and a second between 2011 and 2018 (follow the black line in the sketch below). We see that expectations rise, fall and flatten. If the Gartner hype cycle is correct, we will experience a second AI winter in the near future.

Now I will expand the sketch with a curve showing the progress of actual development of AI technology (follow the red line in the sketch):

The red line illustrates that a jump in increased AI capacity causes expectations to inflate. On the way up to the peak, expectations rise faster than the actual AI capacity. During the AI winter, technology still developed, but at a slower pace (since research funding was substantially decreased) until the two lines converged on the plateau of productivity. The breakthroughs in AI the last couple of decades caused the current peak of inflated expectations, which, after a possible second AI winter, will converge with the actual AI capacity. But first we should be prepared to put on some warm winter clothes to survive the approaching winter! Brrrr.

When I was a little girl I tried to watch every episode of the American television series Knight Rider, not because of the male main character who fought injustice and crime, but because of Dr. Bonnie Barstow, the female chief technician of KITT. KITT was an artificially intelligent self-driving car that could understand and communicate in natural language, and one could remote-connect to it via a wrist watch.

Which 10 year old’s heart wouldn’t start beating faster by this? I wanted to be like Dr. Bonnie Barstow when I grew up, building technology and machines that were so intelligent, that humans could talk to them!

Eventually, I started my university education and focused on natural language processing or how to make machines understand and communicate in natural language. Back then (about 20 years ago) we studied linguistic theories in order to understand the underlying principles of how humans process natural language, and then developed so-called finite state methods (e.g. formal grammars, graphs and automata) that could be implemented in machines.

Since recently, everyone in natural language processing (or in any other research area of your choice) seem to use machine learning methods to solve problems: given a problem statement x and a machine learning algorithm y, apply y to x, and obtain very good and fast results. The only tiny remaining question is: why do we obtain these results?

Do machines today speak and reason like humans do due to the omnipresent machine learning methodology? No, they don’t. Did we make progress? Yes and no. We obtain faster and better results for specific problems, but those who want to understand some principles of human cognition, do not gain the scientific insight they seek.

Currently I’m working with colleagues at the Department of Computing Science, and three Pepper robots on developing dialogue management approaches that combine machine learning methods and finite-state methods. Machine learning algorithms serve us well for problems that involve mining patterns or correlations over large data sets, and finite-state methods give us the understanding that we, as scientists, naturally seek. I believe that the key to a new advancement in AI is combining methodological approaches, so that we get reliable and fast results, combined with insight into stated problems and their solutions.

I want to share an advice by Marvin Minsky (one of the pioneers of AI) who said ”If you just have a single problem to solve, then fine, go ahead and use a neural network. But if you want to do science and understand how to choose architectures, or how to go to a new problem, you have to understand what different architectures can and cannot do”.

Over the past years, I obtained my PhD, tried out various methodological approaches, worked with Pepper robots, and I can say, that I am Dr. Bonnie Barstow but my Peppers are not KITT. Not yet.

Did you know that Trollsjön (or Rissájávri in Northern Sami) is the clearest and cleanest lake in Sweden? On June 27, we meet with the students from the introductory course on Alpine Ecology (7,5 credits), held at CIRC via Umeå University, and went together to Kärkevagge and Trollsjön. The aim of today was to learn about alpine pollination and to study alpine bumblebees. Though, Yrsa’s and my main aim was to photographically catch the stunning landscape of Kärkevagge and the students in action. While none of us are experts of the area, the course lecturer, Stig-Olof, told us all about it’s ecological and biological features. While running around with a camera on stones and creeks and trying to catch up with the students catching bumblebees is not the easiest task, the pictures still ended up quite beautiful – with the help of an incredible view. To see all the photos from the field day with the Alpine Ecology students, see CIRC’s Facebook page or Instagram!

First week at the Climate Impact Research Centre (CIRC, part of the Department of Ecology and Environmental Science at Umeå University) and I am already in love with the Swedish mountains! Before going to Abisko, I had only seen the mountains from the train window going up to Narvik. This summer, Sebastian Enhager (see his profile) and I will spend three months here in Abisko, about half an hour from Riksgränsen and about seventeen hours (by car) from both of our hometown, Stockholm, assisting as CIRC’s new communication interns.

This first week at the research station has involved a lot of new faces, exciting events and already a lot of field work, making use of our new hiking boots. During these first days in Abisko, we participated in the grand opening at Naturum with representatives from Gabna Sapmí village, Norrbotten administrative board and the Swedish Government. Taking photos of the new app ”Norrbottens naturkarta” (”Norrbotten’s nature map” in English), the new exhibition at Naturum and the launch of the new gate to Kungsleden, as well as starting up and promoting the event on CIRC’s communication channels (see CIRC’s Instagram, Facebook and webpage).

The remaining days this first week have involved taking photos and producing content from several field works, on a boat in Stordalen mire and the beautiful lake Torneträsk as well as hiking on the Nuolja mountain and in Abisko National Park. The amount of different projects being carried out at CIRC is impressive. During this first week, we have only been able to touch upon the surface of these activities. Additionally, this week we have awed to the Midsummer sun never going down and danced around the Midsummer pole. And tomorrow, we will participate in and contribute with communicative content to a fairly new project called Participatory Mapping, where Swedish Television (SVT) also will join.

There is a lot happening and a lot to do here, as you might notice from this attempt to describe one week here in one blog post. Follow Sebastian’s and my blog to get to know more about everything that is happening in the Arctic and the Swedish northern mountains.

Conference participations are a recurring research activity. We are expected to disseminate, communicate and network. Latest example was a one-day conference in Stockholm about current state and future development of the environment. A lot of inspiring talks by scientists, representatives from industrial and governmental agencies. Here, I present my own summary:

The future energy sources are renewable (sun, sun, sun, wind and water). However, the present is still crude oil, coal and gas – a transition that will take time!

The carbon emissions within Sweden are decreasing, which is a positive development. However, considerable proportions of our food and goods are imported, so a growing part of “our” emissions are generated elsewhere.

Great focus on the feasibility to achieve the Global Sustainable Development Goals until 2030 – little focus that we fail badly to achieve important environmental goals on the national level…

Planetary boundaries and limited natural resources are obvious. However, the current global economy is still not adequately adjusted and regulated to that rather well-established fact.

There is a clear trend that environmental issues are moving from a focus on technology and environment towards behavior and policy.

And, on a personal note:

Travelling by train to Stockholm is a more than convenient alternative. Sustainability starts with your own choices!

No matter of color, the politicians that were represented at the conference seemed all to have very reasonable arguments concerning environmental politics. Obviously, there are soon elections in Sweden.

And, this week, a new beer was released, entirely brewed on recycled water (yes, the water leaving the sewage treatment plants in Sweden apparently has drinking water quality). It will cost me quite an effort, but I will have to try.

One of those days… the school is closed today due to a planning day, and suddenly the kids follow half a day to the office. I appreciate their company, but don’t expect that you get anything done! So, they do some drawings and we are listening to Samir & Viktor while I try to write this text.

This morning, I promised them to visit my office and to make a session at the microscope to have a look at plankton. No, no, I am not one of those nerdy scientist-parents that try to introduce the kids to natural sciences at early age. The shark book by Sarah Sheppard that my kids received as a gift for Christmas a few years ago did the job much better than I do – so, they really ASKED to have a look at plankton!

Is it possible to balance work and family life as a scientist? I have eight years of personal experience, and had to learn a few things:
(1) Kids decrease the number of hours you spend in the office, but increase your efficiency (“good-enough approach”).
(2) You have to learn to say no (I am still can improve there).
(3) In case your parents live abroad, it is a tremendous advantage to have parents-in-law nearby which are willing to sort out some impossible days.
(4) And, let’s face it: your scientific output will – at least temporarily – decrease.

Any reason to complain? No. After all, also the life as a scientist is all about choices… Let’s go for ice-cream now!

Dealing with long-term environmental development, our research field faces regularly the challenge to evaluate the present-day conditions against a historical background. Often, the historical conditions are seen as pristine and unaffected by human perturbations, even though there exist many examples that also earlier cultures contributed heavily to the degradation of ecosystems and the environment. A well-known example is certainly the history of the Easter Islands, but there are also many examples in “our backyard”, as for instance the history of mining activities in the Bergslagen region, with tremendous environmental impact.

For the two decades of my own professional career within research and education, I may not yet be able to draw any firm conclusions whether things were better in the past. There was certainly less administration and reporting, but on the other hand, important tools such as the World Wide Web or E-mail systems were not yet available (by the way, never tell your students that you remember the time before E-mails and Cambro – they immediately think you are a dinosaur).

However, one research activity is very well suited for comparisons with the past. No matter what we are dealing with as environmental scientists, at some point we need to collect samples to describe and understand the environment or to test our hypotheses. How did early scientists carry out field work? One of the pioneers of Swedish sediment research was Gerard de Geer, and there exists a wonderful clip about field work from the 1930.

Last night our neighborhood got together to take care of the joint property unit (is this the appropriate term for städkväll i samfälligheten?). I was mentioning to my neighbor – also active as writer on this blog – that I was supposed to blog during the coming weeks, and she suggested me to write about my research topic. “What are you working with?”, and I answered “diatoms, sediment and long-term environmental change” – “What are diatoms? This seems way more interesting than the long-term thingy”. Obviously, this is a very adequate opportunity to present diatoms, my favorite environmental indicators, to a wider audience.

Diatoms exist in literally everywhere where you can find water, for example in streams, rivers, lakes, and the oceans, but also in the soil. They are a major group of unicellular algae with important ecological function for oxygen production and food webs. In a typical lake in northern Sweden, you will find millions of diatoms in one liter of water, without recognizing them by eye. And, as you can see on the picture above, they are just stunning! Each diatom has a characteristic, beautiful ornamentation that is only visible using a light microscope. To fully resolve all structures, scanning electron microscope techniques are needed. The diatoms above, Cyclotella, live in our study lake Nylandssjön (Nordingrå), and have a diameter of a few micrometers. Still reading? Then you should go for a more detailed description, for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatom

Why studying them? In order to understand long-term environmental changes, we are depending on environmental archives and indicators that can tell us something about the conditions that prevailed in prehistoric times, before instrumental data are available. And diatoms fulfill two of the major criteria that are important. First, they are sensitive to the ambient water quality (temperature, salinity and nutrient levels), and record environmental conditions simply through their presence. Secondly, their cell walls that are made of silica may persist in for very, very long time. A rather special application field of diatoms is forensic limnology. The presence of characteristic diatom colonies on clothes or in tissue sample of suspects or victims are matched against samples from the crime scene location. As they diatom assemblage is unique to every lake or pond, a close match of diatom assemblage can provide evidential support.

Not only are the surroundings in our neighborhood now tidy after the long winter in northern Sweden. More important, I got by chance a topic for the first blog post. Thanks, Bodil!